D.C. Dodd, C.T. Hall, J. Pollard

A rapid burnthrough of a structurally intact fuselage occurred in the B737 accident at Manchester in 1985. This initiated a study into improvements of breakthrough resistance or fire hardening of aircraft fuselages to delay the ingress of the fire and associated toxic gases so increasing the survivability time within the cabin. On behalf of the Civil Aviation Authority, Faverdale technology Centre (FTC) is currently developing a fire test facility and procedure to enable an investigation into methods of fire hardening the fuselage in existing ad future aircraft designs to take place. Experience from both accidents and full scale tests have shown that a typical aircraft, there may be potential for the fuselage to be fire hardened to delay the penetration of an external fire into the passenger compartment.

D.C. Dodd

An investigation into the burnthrough resistance of fuselages and the effects of soot deposition in the early stages of a pool fire on burnthrough time.

Harry Webster

The burnthrough resistance of aircraft fuselages to external fuel fires was investigated in this test series. Threee tests were conducted in a wheels-up mode and three in the wheels-down configuration. A comprehensive data base was developed documenting fire entry paths, burnthrough time, and cabin environmental conditions. The overall entry paths, burnthrough time, and cabin environmental conditions. The overall resistance of the two test intact aircraft fuselages to fire penetration was documents.

Gregory E. Grimstad

This project involved assembly of the hardward and development of the software identified in ACES Phase 1 Concept Development contract study. The assembled system allows three critical stages in repsonding to an aircraft inflight smoke/fire event to be examined. These are (1) sensing (data gathering), (2) establishing the alerting criteria to maintain quick response while reducing false alarsm (data analysis), and (3) methods of providing assistance to the crew, bith flight deck and cabin, in rsponding to an inflight event.

Robert P. Garner, Ph.D

A cabin water spray system (CWSS) has been suggested as a means of attenuating the severity of smoke and fire commonly associated with aircraft accidents. All aspects of passenger and cabin safety must be considered when evaluating a new safety system or conecpt. The purposes of this report are to briefly review the pathophysiological changes occurring in the respiratory system as a result of thermal injury and to quantitatively estimate the risk of creating a more hazardous cabin environment by activation of a CWSS. Changes in the heat content of the cabin atmosphere resulting from CWSS activation were calculated using parameters consistent with current aircraft and proposals for CWSS design. The results suggest that only a very small volume of the aircraft cabin would have an increase in heat content that could result in thermal injury.